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Two former Parramatta Eels players are accused of harbouring semi-automatic weapons and possessing more than half-a-million dollars in cash after dramatic arrests in Sydney's Centennial Park yesterday.

NSW consorting laws need change: Ombudsman

Most of the official warnings given by police to ban people consorting with youth offenders were unlawful, a report by NSW's Acting Ombudsman has found.

Laws were modernised in 2012 giving police power to ban people from communicating or associating with convicted offenders after being warned to stay away from those offenders.

Professor John McMillan says that during the review period, from April 2012 to April 2015, warnings were issued in relation to 201 young people aged between 13 and 17.

Of that, 93 per cent of young people were issued with warnings, and 66 per cent had friends or associates warned about them.

Most of the latter warnings were unlawful, Prof McMillan said.

"This exceptional error rate of 79 per cent resulted in 195 unlawful consorting warnings being issued, most of them to other children and young people," Prof McMillan said, adding that the error both directly affected young people but also constituted a waste of police resources.

His report to state parliament reveals three quarters of those young people didn't have an indictable conviction formally recorded in their record, as the laws require.

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Prof McMillan has made 20 recommendations to parliament seeking to make the laws fairer, including preventing them from being used against people aged 17 and under.

"Unless these changes are made it is likely that the consorting laws will continue to be used to address policing issues not connected to serious and organised crime in a manner that may impact unfairly on disadvantaged and vulnerable people in our community," he said.

He also wants to see defences expanded so the laws don't prevent people complying with parole, obtaining emergency accommodation or seeking welfare or support services.

Data referred to in the report identified clusters in the use of consorting laws against homeless people, and that homeless people were being charged with habitually consorting.

Prof McMillan also found disproportionate numbers of Aboriginal people were being subject to the laws, while the warnings also breach the privacy of convicted offenders, by disclosing their convictions to others.